“Let
me give you some counsel – bastard.”
From a Game of Thrones
by George R. R. Martin. First Book.
Tyrion Lannister (Dwarf)
speaking to Jon Snow. (Bastard of Ed Stark)
“Let
me give you some counsel bastard.” Lannister said. “Never forget what you are,
for surely the world will not. Make it your strength. Then it can never be your
weakness. Armour yourself in it, and it will never be used to hurt you.”
Jon
was in no mood for anyone’s counsel. “What do you know about being a bastard?”
“All
dwarfs are bastards in their father’s eyes.”
……..
Remember
this, boy. All dwarfs may be bastards, yet not all bastards need be dwarfs.”
From
Walter Anderson:
Bad
things do happen; how I respond to them defines my character and the quality of
my life. I can choose to sit in perpetual sadness, immobilized by the gravity
of my loss, or I can choose to rise from the pain and treasure the most
precious gift I have – life itself.”
Bad
things happen, we often feel defeated or trapped. Life is like that it gives
than it takes away. We have a number of
choices from hiding away or pretending the adversity does not exist, to going
forth and meeting it head on. Or a
combination of the two.
But
the real truth is that in every negative situation there are positives and we
must have the courage to find them.
If
we understand this dramatic truth, then when you face life’s difficulties, ask
yourself some simple questions:
ü What
can I learn from this event?
ü What
power do I have over this event?
ü When
looking at this event in perspective what can I learn from it?
ü Would
or could I do things differently next time?
ü What
possibilities has this event opened up for me?
ü Will
my experience of this event enable me to help others in similar situations?
ü Has
this event made me stronger?
Here
is an episode out of Martins’
own life:
The unexpected
commercial failure of Martin's fourth book, The Armageddon Rag (1983), "essentially
destroyed my career as a novelist at the time", he recalled. It began his
career in television, however,[9]
as a result of a Hollywood option on that novel that then led to him being
hired, first as a staff writer and then as an Executive Story Consultant, for the
revival of the Twilight Zone. ……And so on
eventually beginning Writing Fire and Ice (Thrones) in 1991.
Life is a journey ups and downs and whether we are
made stronger by its downs is dependent on one thing; captured by Martin in “Thrones.”
It is our attitude, it is what we bring within ourselves and personally to
every situation every gift.
It is the
startling fact that we are the arbitrators of our own destiny. We and only we
determine our internal strength or weakness in face of life’s’ perils.
To do this we must use our minds and do some
thinking but not any sort of thinking:
Thinking: Not any sort of thinking will do, you have to
be able to do some deep thinking about how you are going to improve a
situation. You have to be able to
analyse and go through the problem or opportunity. Sift through the details and
asses the outcomes and possibilities. This does not happen in the middle of a
busy day or frenetic activity. You have to stop
yes that’s right stop. You have to
make the conscious effort to stop all your activity and go somewhere and think
about what is happening. For a lot of people this is not easy, they may even be
frightened of confronting themselves. The other thing it is a habit, once you
get into it, it’s not so bad. I have a thinking chair in my shed it is where I
go, a quiet place away from everything.
The key is I am not running away from issues, problems or people. I am actually facing them head on, meeting
them, staring them down in the only place they really exist, my mind.
The
secret is I have to be positive. It is so easy to slip into the old negative
trip and blame game, be positive because that is the smart thing to do. It has
been amazing to me over the years how thinking about things deeply makes the
solution seem attainable, the project surmountable, and the relationship
salvageable.
19.9.13
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